How does your garden grow?

My new yard art!  I picked it up yesterday at Art in the Park.  I love it for a number of reasons, one of those being it will always remind me of what a lovely day I had with such great friends looking at amazing art, listening to great music, feeling the sun warm our outsides as well as our insides, tasting fabulous food and driving a little erratically up and down the hills of Francis Park in the golf cart (narrowly averting our chance to 'jump' a little ditch!).

In addition to all the art on display (and for sale) there was an antique car show going on.  I fell In. Love. with the red convertible Studebaker (it was a 1962 I think...). It seemed a more manageable size than the 19-foot convertible 1960 Cadillac that was there.  I shuddered at the thought of having to parallel park that land yacht.  No the Studebaker is definitely more agreeable for me. In addition, there was a 1986 Mercedes Sedan that I have no idea how it qualifies to be an antique.  It's a little disconcerting to think that cars manufactured when I graduated high school could now be considered antique.  (That reminds me of when Ladybug and I went to her college orientation this summer and I passed a Porsche 911, you know like Tom Cruise drove in Risky Business and it had "antique car" license plates and I thought that was just wrong, wrong, wrong.)

We did a bit of people watching & people-appreciating too while we sat and listened to the blues band.  And it was agreed that on the whole the people who attended this art fair were definitely above average in looks.  In general all were nicely dressed, had all their teeth and appeared relatively 'healthy' looking.  It was a far, far cry from when I attended the Reo Speedwagon/Styx concert at Riverport last year.  I had never experienced that level of concentrated, non-diluted homely before (and I hope to never again). 

I was pleasantly surprised to run into the proprietor of one of my favorite restaurants too.  I had not seen him since my last visit right before my cancer surgery.  I thought I had told him of my diagnosis that night but he said he didn't know and had been wondering where I'd been.  He shared that he had beaten throat cancer about six years ago and gave me a big, healing hug.  It was nice to discuss some of the finer points of living through chemotherapy treatment with a survivor.  I told him we'd come in soon for at least dinner.  I laughed that I was unsure if I could actually muster the courage to sing like I normally do since I'm not drinking during treatment.  So I made him promise that before I would agree to sing, he had to make sure that ALL the patrons were schnockered so it wouldn't matter how I did; they wouldn't remember anyway. 

I closed out my day talking with my neighbor about my new yard art and she telling me that they had prayed for me at Mass so the Holy Spirit was surrounding me.  Smiling, I thanked her and said that must have been why it was such a glorious day.

And it truly was.